Well, I have used Rosetta Stone, and I must be honest with everyone and say that it is one of the worst methods I've seen to learn a language.

The screen displays four pictures, some text, and a native speaker reads the text, and then you're supposed to pick the picture that matches the text and the spoken words.

However, the native speakers speak fairly quickly with a very strong regional accent that caused me to believe that "h" was pronounced "s" in Japanese, which I would not think to be true in most cases.

Second of all, the font used is terrible; it is very difficult to distinguish the different strokes of the kanji, especially the complex ones.

Finally, advancing through the lessons is very difficult because nothing is explained. The only English you'll see in the program is the help file, which really is a disadvantage to those of us who like to know the how and why of Japanese. The first few lessons are easy to figure out, but then the program suddenly starts throwing out complete sentences and there is no indication of which word means what.

If you are serious about Japanese, I would strongly disagree with any recommendation to use this program.

I'm with gakushi. I was using R.S. for a bit, but found it very unhelpful b/c the font is difficult to read and can't be changed and b/c they don't explain the grammer involved.

The idea behind the program is that its supposed to mimic learning your first langauge. However, what the program creators fail to understand is that kids have very poor grammer skills until they're taught otherwise, whether by their parents or by a teacher in school.

Perhaps after I've learned enough grammer and am very familiar with kana and kanji I'd consider using it again. but, definitely not a good place to start.

I just tried the demo, and I didn't like it at all. It gives no explanations. All you have are 4 squares, a native reader reads some text, and you pick the corresponding square. You don't even get a translation if you get it right. It's not very helpful at all. On top of that, it doesn't explain grammar or sentence structure.

Last edited by ShikenkanBebii on Mon 01.16.2006 5:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have been going through these lessons. I find it very easy to pick up on sentence structure and some vocab. My approach, reading only, in kana mode at work, then kanji/listening mode at home. What this program is supposed to do is little by little get you to think Japanese w/o translating, ie. instead of (picture of elephant)=elephant=象 you get elephant=(pic of elephant)=象 so that there is a direct corelation in your brain between a picture and the (in this case) Japanese word. Pictures can be vague at times, but overall not too bad. Overall, I think the program is alright, when used in conjunction with other information.

I've used this program before and must say it's not really worth it. I saw on eBay it was going for soo mucn and thought, "If it costs that much, it must be good..."
Little did I know I wouldn't learn much from it and I do not recommend it.